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Monday, February 13, 2012

What I caught in my net this weekend

Some strange winter tide has scooped up a veritable shoal of little echinoderms and deposited their vacated shells on the beach where I went hunting.

feather

Close up, an ordinary discarded feather reveals a kind of extraordinary beauty - the undulating line of its vane edge and the delicate pattern created by the hooklets and barbules, which reminds me of old weathered velvet.

urchin

The pink tips of the striated spines on the urchin don't really register until you hold it close, almost touching your nose, in the palm of your hand, held open and up in the watery winter sunshine.

oyster

Elsewhere, a perfect, delicately hinged and fragile oyster shell which fell apart into book-matched halves as small inquisitive hands explored it. In its fractured state it was still beautiful and so we took it home, after fitting it together like a jigsaw.

nude urchin

Later, at home, a little scrub and a rub denuded this urchin of his spines.

Vacances d'hiver is in full swing in the Hybrid Handmade house. It is marked by an exponential increase in the amount of Lego that can be found on every available horizontal surface. Sturdy footwear is advised at all times - because when a little bit of that stuff sneaks up on you and ends up beneath your bare, unsuspecting foot....